Communicating Good News Across Cultures

(c) 2009 Dr. J. David Arnett

The Pentecostal Movement places a priority on preaching, evangelization, and missions. Believing the Spirit Baptism empowers one to witness “to the ends of the earth,” the early pioneers of the Pentecostal Movement spread across the globe (Acts 1:8). Without the benefit of cross-cultural studies or language school, the so-called “Missionaries of the One-Way Ticket” endeavored to carry out the missio Dei—the “mission of God.”

Many early Pentecostal ministers and missionaries mistakenly believed that the supernatural ability to speak in other tongues that accompanied their Baptism in the Holy Spirit would enable them to “Go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone, everywhere” (Mark 16:15, NLT). A. G. Garr, the first missionary to leave the Azusa Street Revival, “went to India fully expecting to preach in Hindustani. After a few months, he admitted his failure on this point, but nonetheless remained to carry on a successful ministry for several years, preaching to these British subjects in English.” [1]

Though disappointed by their inability to speak the languages of the natives, the early Pentecostal missionaries adjusted their presentations of the sacrosanct message of God to connect effectively with their audiences. They adopted methods and media to aid them in communicating the good news that reconciliation and restored intimacy with the Creator is possible through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Eventually, the Pentecostal missionaries implemented indigenous church principles so that native converts—who obviously understood the local language and cultural context—could even more efficiently share the gospel. Notable authority on Assemblies of God foreign missions, Melvin L. Hodges advocated the application of indigenous principles while at the same time emphasizing that the New Testament Church is established only with the dynamic power of the Holy Spirit. Hodges writes, “Along with the evangelistic and church-planting ministries are those auxiliary activities of reducing languages to written form, the translating of the Scriptures and training of national pastors and evangelists.” [2]

Today, passionate Pentecostal ministers find themselves confronted by a similar dilemma. This time it is not a foreign language in a foreign land, but a “foreign culture” in the neighborhood. This alien culture is the result of the epistemological and cultural upheaval known as postmodernism. According to Diogenes Allen, “A massive intellectual revolution is taking place that is perhaps as great as that which marked off the modern world from the Middle Ages. The foundations of the modern world are collapsing, and we are entering a post-modern world.” [3]

[1] D. William Faupel, “Glossolalia as Foreign Language: An Investigation of the Early Twentieth-Century Pentecostal Claim,” ed. Michael Mattei, 2003; Wesley Center for Applied Theology, Northwest Nazarene University Web site; available from http://wesley.nnu.edu/ WesleyanTheology/theojrnl/31-35/31-1-05.htm#_edn21; accessed 14 February 2004.

[2] Melvin L. Hodges, The Indigenous Church, rev. ed. (Springfield, Mo.: Gospel Publishing House, 1976), 10.

[3] Diogenes Allen, Christian Belief in a Postmodern World (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1989), 2.